This disclosure relates generally to online systems, and more specifically to selecting content for presentation to users of an online system.
An online system, such as a social networking system, allows users to connect to and to communicate with other users of the online system. Users create profiles on an online system that are tied to their identities and include information about the users, such as interests and demographic information. The users may be individuals or entities such as corporations or charities. Content items are presented to various users by the online system to encourage users to interact with the online system.
The increasing popularity of online systems, such as social networking system, allows entities (e.g., businesses) to gain public attention for products or services or to persuade online system users to take actions regarding products or services provided by the entities via an online system. For example, an entity (e.g., a business) presents content items to online system users to gain public attention for products or services or to persuade online system users to take an action regarding products or services provided by the entity. Many online systems may receive compensation from an entity for presenting certain types of content items provided by the entity to online system users.
To allow an entity to particularly tailor content presented by the online system to specific online system users, the entity associates targeting criteria with content identifying characteristics of online system users eligible to be presented with the content. For example, if an entity associates content with targeting criteria identifying one or more characteristics of users eligible to be presented with the content, the online system identifies users of the online system having at least a threshold number of the one or more characteristics identified by the targeting criteria as eligible to be presented with the content and does not present the content to users that do not have at least the threshold number of the one or more criteria specified by the targeting criteria. User characteristics specified by targeting criteria may be demographic information, connections between users and other users, actions performed by the user, interests of the user, or any other suitable information maintained by the online system.
Conventionally, actions specified by targeting criteria associated with content are limited to actions performed by users through the online system or actions that are communicated to the online system for logging by third party systems. For example, a conventional online system stores interactions between its users and content presented by the online system. However, online system users interact with content and perform other actions through third party systems external to the online system that are not captured by the online system, limiting the information about online system users usable by the online system to select content for presentation to its users.